s Plato's myths have not been
able to flourish without changing their nature and passing into ordinary
dramatic mythology--into a magic system in which all the forces, once
terms in moral experience, became personal angels and demons. Similarly
with the Christian sacraments: these magic rites, had they been
established in India among a people theosophically minded, might have
furnished cues to high transcendental mysteries. Baptism might have been
interpreted as a symbol for the purged and abolished will, and Communion
as a symbol for the escape from personality. But European races, though
credulous enough, are naturally positivistic, so that, when they were
called upon to elucidate their ceremonial mysteries, what they lit upon
was no metaphysical symbolism but a material and historical drama.
Communion became a sentimental interview between the devout soul and the
person of Christ; baptism became the legal execution of a mythical
contract once entered into between the first and second persons of the
Trinity. Thus, instead of a metaphysical interpretation, the extant
magic received its needful justification through myths.

[Sidenote: They appear ready made, like parts of the social fabric.]

When mythology first appears in western literature it already possesses
a highly articulate form. The gods are distinct personalities, with
attributes and histories which it is hard to divine the source of and
which suggest no obvious rational interpretation. The historian is
therefore in the same position as a child who inherits a great religion.
The gods and their doings are _prima facie_ facts in his world like any
other facts, objective beings that convention puts him in the presence
of and with which he begins by having social relations. He envisages
them with respect and obedience, or with careless defiance, long before
he thinks of questioning or proving their existence. The attitude he
assumes towards them makes them in the first instance factors in his
moral world. Much subsequent scepticism and rationalising philosophy
will not avail to efface the vestiges of that early communion with
familiar gods. It is hard to reduce to objects of science what are
essentially factors in moral intercourse. All thoughts on religion
remain accordingly coloured with passion, and are felt to be, above all,
a test of loyalty and an index to virtue. The more derivative,
unfathomable, and opaque is the prevalent idea of the gods, the harder
i